Life
by cliffrose-acetone
Summary: Set after the events in On Freedom's Wings. It's a year after Eren's accident and he and Levi have moved into a new apartment together. Eren makes some important decisions.


By now, Levi has learned to appreciate the small details in his life, like waking up every morning with the sunlight instead of his alarm; the new coffee machine with the timer that always has a fresh cup ready by the time he gets to the kitchen; the hot water in a shower with frankly amazing water pressure. And then there are the other, more important details, like the days when he wakes up to Eren's sleeping face, or to him experimenting with breakfast food in the kitchen again, or painting out on the balcony, deep in concentration and still in his paint-splattered t-shirt and boxers. Levi waits for the moment when looking at Eren doesn't make his race, or for when he sees or smells something and _doesn't_ think of Eren. It's only been a year, he supposes. It's too early to tell yet. Levi is learning to enjoy it.

This is one day when Levi wakes up first and is already perched on a kitchen stool with his laptop and a cup of coffee by the time Eren appears. Levi is staring at the first sentence on a new manuscript and trying to figure out why it's making him uncomfortable. Eren leans over and kisses Levi's cheek and Levi doesn't miss the piece of toast that simultaneously leaves his plate. Eren, he notes, also smells like the new soap ( something pink with flowers on the bottle that Levi accidentally picked up while aiming for the usual shower gel last shopping trip. Levi thinks then that he's going to keep buying it). He decides he won't get annoyed about the toast.

"You're going to be late," Levi murmurs over the rim of his cup. Eren is trying to eat toast and double check his portfolio without getting butter on the pages, and also put his shoes on. Levi doesn't have to turn around to see it; it's all reflected just fine on his computer screen

Eren grunts because he knows it's true but he doesn't really care. He's been saying all week that he'll probably turn down the job unless they offer to pay him more. After looking at the storyboard himself, Levi has to agree. That kind of work deserves more than the asking price, even if it is just a small animation job for a commercial.

A minute later, Eren finally has his shoes on and is grabbing his keys (on the hook near the sink where Levi puts them so that Eren will stop losing them). He's halfway out the door when he realises he's forgotten something.

There's warmth by Levi's cheek then and he turns into it; Eren presses his lips against Levi's surprisingly softly for someone who was rushing out the door a moment earlier, and Levi forgets that this is the part where he sighs, pushes Eren away and tells him to get going. He does the sighing part fine. But he makes the mistake of relaxing into the kiss, putting his free hand on Eren's face, pausing just to savour the soft curve of Eren's lips for as long as possible. His tilts his head ever so slightly and curls his fingers in Eren's hair. Eren tastes warm.

"I love you," Eren breathes, and at this point Levi wants to pull Eren back to bed so badly that his chest aches with it. But he's the oldest of them both, so he grudgingly admits that he should probably know better.

"Love won't make the bus go faster," Levi says dryly, and Eren grins as he picks up his bag up off the floor. He moves so easily now, Levi thinks, that it's easy to forget that a year ago he'd felt too broken to even learn to draw again. "I'll pick you up after," Levi offers, and Eren agrees with one last kiss on Levi's cheek before rushing out the door.

* * *

It's obvious before he even gets into the car that Eren is angry. He's mostly frustrated and not completely furious, but it's hard to tell unless you know what Eren's true anger is really like. Levi turns down the radio and waits.

"Well," Eren starts, and Levi knows he'd cross his arms if he could, "they fucking loved it. Said they wanted me to start this time next week, or earlier.

Levi settled back in the driver's seat.

"I didn't relax though, and I could almost see them both sweating when they figured that out. This asshole tried to hustle me out the door right after they saw the drawings so maybe I'd forget to ask, so then I knew I was right. I had to bring up payment and you _know_-" he turned to look at Levi with an expression of deepest exasperation. Levi knew. "It's just...she looked so uncomfortable when she knew I wasn't buying it. Barely a pound per frame, who does that? And for the amount of detail and quality they want? Hell no. And she tried reasoning with me but I was already out the door and...I don't want to deal with that right now." He sighs, heavily. Levi's hand is in Eren's hair again, and the tension eases out of his shoulders. "Why do people act like I'm an asshole for wanting to get paid for my damn work?"

Levi is about to say something along the lines of "because people are full of shit", but is interrupted by a few anxious knocks on the passenger window. Levi can see the marks left by the woman's knuckles, and he isn't happy about it. But she points to the phone in her hand and the held call. Levi can tell that Eren considers flat out ignoring her and asking to leave immediately. Maybe it's the expression on her face that makes her look like she's worried she's going to lose her job, or maybe it's something else, but Eren rolls his eyes instead and gets out of the car to take the call. And after a few seconds, Levi turns off the car and follows.

Judging by who's on the phone, Levi feels like Eren should maybe sound a little more professional and less like he's going to cuss someone out, but he also understands how Eren's feeling, so he doesn't try to stop it. Instead he follows Eren and the woman into the lobby of this huge, glass fronted building and pretends to be interested in the various identical plants.

"..sir?"

It takes Levi a second to realise that he's being spoken to, and another to realise that the person is the woman who'd come out to the car with the phone. One of the two people at the meeting probably. For now he just gives her a look. Maybe she's going to tell him to leave.

"Are you…?" She stops suddenly, swallows and shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't-"

"What is it?" Levi asks because the more she talks the more confused he feels. If she wants him to leave so badly, she could just-

"You aren't...Levi Ackerman, are you?"

Levi takes a moment to curse Hanji and Erwin for ever suggesting the author's photo in the back of _Hannah_ (thankfully the first and only novel to feature the photo since Levi put his foot down after that). He hates taking posed pictures because he hates his smile, and he also doesn't particularly want to get recognised. Then again, maybe it was that one videotapped interview he did a month ago for the book release. He didn't think anyone would actually watch it. He's still mostly a nobody.

Levi had been quiet for too long, so she's babbling by the time he unfreezes. "I...really love your work. I picked up one of your books when I was at the airport a while back and...I've never read anything quite like it. The way you use words is...there were points where I had to stop reading just to….what Hannah felt, I felt and when she found Maria…"She was becoming flustered and Levi was still staring blankly at her. "But I'm sure people have told you this before. You probably don't want to be bothered by a fan out of the blue either-"

A fan.

"No."

She stops, a little distressed, blushing. An apology is coming. Eren is still on the phone. He still looks pissed.

Levi struggles with spoken words a lot more than he does written ones, so he takes the time to try and use the right ones this time. "I've been hearing that the book's been doing well," he says, "but I didn't know my book could do that." He's a little overwhelmed, but he has time to marvel over this later, he reminds himself. "Thanks. For picking it up, I mean. For liking it."

Her smile is really beautiful, he thinks. If he could draw even half as well as Eren, he'd try his hand at it. That smile will probably find its way into the next book though. If he can write her, that'll be enough. It was worth all of that struggle, he thinks, just for this one person.

If he'd known he could do this eight years ago, maybe he never would've given up on writing in the first place.

He tears a page out of his notebook to sign for her. She didn't ask for it, but he can't think of any other way to thank her. Eren sees it as he gets off the phone, and he understands. Levi doesn't tear pages out of his notebooks for just anyone. The joy on her face makes it worth it.

"It feels good, doesn't it?" Eren says, when they're back in the car and heading home. "When they tell you how you made them feel." Levi can only nod.

Apparently, Eren explains later, there was some sort of "miscommunication" and they'd _always_ intended to pay Eren more than they initially offered, as well as add another few artists to help him so the whole project wouldn't take fifty thousand years to finish. Eren doesn't buy it and he's going to talk to his agent first (it was always funny seeing Eren mention his agent Maddie because it was always with the same feeling as a kid getting their first letter in the mail addressed to them with a "Mr" in front of their name). But it looks like he's finally getting his shot at professional animation with a budget that isn't 3 gallons of coffee and two hours of sleep. He's happy. So Levi is too.

* * *

The happiness lasts for about another week before it gives way to obsession. Levi's seen him like this before, but it gets hard trying to put up with it for 2 whole months. Through meetings and actually getting work done, Eren barely sleeps. Levi goes out and comes back hours later to find Eren still hunched over his work table with grooves in his fingers from holding his tablet pen for so long. With the way he works, Levi wonders if he's drawing every single frame himself.

"They want promo shit or something," he mutters when Levi brings him tea. "Which is _awesome_, especially when I bet they're just going to take our illustrations and put gross Word Art all over it."

Levi wants to suggest that Eren stop heading the project and hand over the reigns to someone else when he comes home from a meeting one week and nearly passes out before he can pull off his jacket. It would be hypocritical of him- when he wrote _Hannah_, he put himself in hospital because he forgot to eat and didn't sleep for 3 days. But it hurts him to see Eren so stressed.

Except it's not all stress, Levi realises. After Eren takes an impromptu nap on the couch for a straight twelve hours and wakes up feeling like death run over twice, he takes a shower, has some food, and gets back to work.

He looks and feels like shit, but he's having fun. And Levi gets that. It's not healthy at all, and he knows he can't let Mikasa or Armin know or else they'll skin him alive, but he finds it hard to tell Eren to stop. He stops Eren from working himself to the point of passing out after that, but if he wants to work, Levi won't stop him.

Eren's almost at breaking point before it's over. He shouts over the phone a lot, throws things and loses multiple tablet pens, gets in a fight with Levi over the toaster and the shower and whose turn it was to do laundry, slams a door and bangs his elbow on a table. They both hate each other for an entire weekend before the whole ordeal is over.

And then it's done, and all that's left is to wait for the commercial to actually air. Eren doesn't want to see it (Levi will keep an eye out for it, and record it every time it's on). He comes home that afternoon, takes a shower, and sleeps. Levi figures he'll give Eren some space for the next few days (he has his own deadlines to worry about now after all, and the day before Eren nearly stabbed Levi in the hand with a knife while emptying the dishwasher), but a few minutes after Eren goes to bed, he appears in the living room again.

His hair is a mess and he has deep circles under his eyes that are painful to look at. His shirt is rumpled and he sways as he rubs his eyes.

"Sleep with me," he says, and he looks so childish standing there rubbing his eye with his fist that Levi's chest aches. He's slightly behind schedule but he can't remember the last time they spent time together that didn't end with both of them being angry at each other.

So Levi saves the two pages he's managed to struggle through, closes his laptop and follows Eren back to their bedroom. Eren struggles to keep his eyes open while he waits for Levi to undress, and as soon as he gets into bed, Eren already has his arms around Levi's waist. Levi realises belatedly that he's clutching at Eren's shirt and his breathing is too fast, but then Eren has him in a death grip that'll be nigh impossible to escape from, so Levi supposes that they're even. They've missed this. There's a lot of catching up to do.

When Levi wakes up,the afternoon light is gone and Eren is already awake. At some point he must've closed the curtains and gotten a bottle of water, which he hands to Levi. Levi sits up and almost drains the bottle in one go.

Eren is looking through his sketchbook, Levi notices, the one he keeps in the bedside table drawer. If he looks, Levi can probably find his notebook in there too, but he doesn't feel like getting it yet. Instead he shifts closer to Eren and puts a hand on his knee.

"You're getting better," Levi says. Eren hums, but he's not agreeing.

"I used to be better than _this_ though," he says, and Levi purses his lips. He stares at the side of Eren's head until he turns to face him.

"You can't spend the rest of your life beating yourself up," Levi says. He takes Eren's hand, threads their fingers together. "I did it for years and it didn't help."

There. Eren can never argue with that.

"I'm always right here if you want to practice," Levi reminds him, and Eren smiles a little.

Eren starts at his neck and Levi wonders again how they started this. He can't remember the exact day, but he can remember the situation; Eren had shaken wherever Levi touched him that night, hid his face in the crook of Levi's neck, and it didn't take long for Levi to notice that Eren was anxious. So he asked.

Eren keeps a sketchbook by the bed, and sometimes in the middle of kissing Levi, he'll sit back to draw something. Levi can always look later, but it's usually days before he sees the sketches. They're mostly anatomical studies, pages and pages of Levi's hands, his collarbones, his hips and bare thighs. Later on Eren draws Levi as he sees him; Levi's eyes are there, his lips, his face at rest, asleep, after climax and before. They're so beautiful, but Levi always feels self-conscious whenever he looks at them. He can see how much Eren loves him in those drawings, and the fact still startles him.

Now Eren kisses his way slowly to Levi's lips and focuses there while he lifts Levi's shirt up and over his head (it took him a while to learn how to take off Levi's clothes with one hand but when he did, he practiced every chance he could, to the point where Levi just got used to walking around the apartment without a shirt). Eren's fingers reach down beyond the waistband of Levi's underwear and then back up, lightly tracing the sharp line of his hip, the dip of his navel, over his chest, under his chin. And then he swings forwards into Levi's lap and they hear the sketchbook flutter off the bed and onto the ground but neither of them care. Eren presses in at the same time that Levi clutches his hips and pulls in. Suddenly he needs the heat of Eren's skin, the weight of his body, needs to press his palms flat against Eren's back and then again on the outside of Eren's thighs. It's been weeks since he drew his fingers along Eren's spine, held his face and pulled back just long enough to try and describe the exact blue-green of Eren's eyes before pushing Eren onto his back, pushing his fingers through Eren's hair, gasping against his mouth, moaning at how _good_ Eren feels underneath him. He feels like he's kissing hard enough to leave bruises and even though it hurts to stop, he has to make sure that Eren is okay with it. The second it takes to wait for Eren's nod of consent is worth it. His cheeks are flushed and lips look swollen and Levi still can't believe how lucky he is to have this.

"I love you," he whispers, and his face crumples and he hates it, but Eren smiles and pulls him into a hug so he won't have to worry about hiding his face. Levi hates how being in love makes him lose control of his emotions, but not quite enough for him to regret falling in love in the first place. "Eren." His lips brush against Eren's skin as he breathes the name over and over again. "Eren. The world. You're the world. To me."

Levi trusts Eren with his life, and with the promise that he will never utter the words Levi speaks to another living soul. If everyone found out he had feelings, he'd have nothing left to intimidate people with.

"I...I know." He's shaking, or maybe they both are. Levi's left forearm is burning. Eren is holding onto it too tightly and Levi gently eases his fingers off and takes his hand instead.

They catch their breath and start again with more gentle kisses on sore lips, make love for what feels like hours until neither of them can move further than to roll over onto their backs and fall asleep together.

And again, Levi is infinitely glad then that Eren chose the right coffee shop to walk in to.

* * *

"I've been thinking about finally getting it."

They're in bed again. It's not quite dark yet and they're both getting further behind on work, but they're both naked and under the covers which is just fine. His notebook and Eren's sketchbook are on the bedside table and the curtains are drawn. They've spent the last few minutes alternating between kissing and taking notes; sometimes Levi will pull away to write down exactly what the bruises along Eren's throat look like, but then Eren will take an hour sitting back on his heels and sketching every inch of Levi's naked body. They like to pretend it counts as research.

Levi's fingers brush the long scar on Eren's hip for the millionth time. He's still trying to form the words to describe how Eren's skin feels, but it can wait. "Getting it?" he asks.

Eren tenses just a little, and Levi figures it out before all the words are even out. "I know I turned it down last time but...Amy emails sometimes." Levi knows this. "She's about fourteen by now." Levi also knows this. "And she still asks if I'm sure I don't want to try it now that they've had time to observe her and make another one." Levi hopes he gets to the point soon. "And now I think...maybe I'm _not_ sure. Maybe...I want to do it after all."

"What's stopping you?" Levi says. Maybe it's not the curve that makes this part so important, he thinks, maybe it's the scent or the warmth.

"The price tag, mostly."

"That's what savings and insurance are for, Eren." His fingers drift towards Eren's navel instead. He loves how sensitive Eren is there. He's not entirely sure why.

"I can't ask you to do that," Eren says,and Levi rolls his eyes.

"I'm going to do it anyway." There's sweat forming on Eren's skin, Levi notes. There was a point in his life when that would've disgusted him. But Eren's stopped talking, so Levi looks up to meet his eyes.

"Eren," he says carefully, "you've managed just fine with one arm for a year. If you want to keep doing that, it's fine. But it won't be giving in if you get the prosthetic."

"It won't be the same," Eren tries, but it's half-hearted.

"I know," Levi says. "You know." He pauses. "Think about it."

Eren nods. He's distracted when Levi kisses him, but it's fine. And it's fine when he drifts off and Levi turns on the bedside lamp to finish writing. It's fine that it takes him a long time to finally decide.

He's nervous. He panics the day before and spends the night pacing before curling up and lying awake by Levi's side on the sofa. They're both tired the next morning and Eren looks like he suddenly thinks that he's making the worst decision of his life. The chances of the operation going _horribly_ wrong are extremely slim, but Levi's still scared. And yet he can't show it, not when Eren needs him.

From the minute Eren goes in, Levi almost expects someone to come back out and tell him that something awful happened. He imagines every possible and impossible situation, from Eren bleeding to death to another limb being accidentally amputated. It's only a few hours, but it's enough for Levi's stomach to tie itself in knots. The only reason why he doesn't start pacing is because Armin and Mikasa are there. Armin is very still. Mikasa is deathly silent and tight-lipped. She can't decide between being happy that Eren wants this, or scared to death that a surgery this experimental could go wrong.

Of course it all goes fine, and the doctor smiles her big relieved smile as she rubs sanitizer onto her hands. She says something about how the nerves all connected properly and that Eren's body didn't reject the prosthetic like they feared. It's all good news but Mikasa and Levi won't let themselves breathe at first. Not until they get to see Eren and the first thing he does when he opens his eyes is start crying. He tries not to, but when they all simultaneously try to hug him and Eren lifts both his arms to hug them back, he can't help it. None of them can.

Levi stands back for a while. He's never seen Mikasa's smile, and this time it's so bright that it's inspiring to look at. Once she gets hold on Eren's hand, she's very reluctant to let go. The nurse tries to protest when she and Armin climb into bed with him, but she gives up after a few seconds. Levi can imagine them as kids then, sleeping over at Eren's or Armin's, ignoring the extra mattress and squishing into one bed together, staying up to talk about memories or play games until they all drifted to sleep. He can imagine them being inseparable, all those years and even now. He's a little jealous of how astoundingly strong their friendship is, but he's infinitely glad that they have it. It's not the kind of thing that happens every day, after all.

He sits by the window of Eren's hospital room and listens to them argue about why Eren moved to his studio apartment, and thinks that the universe is a truly amazing place if it took Eren misspelling a street name for him to end up at the wrong apartment complex near to a little coffee shop one year ago.


End file.
